How to Rebuild Confidence After Failure: Why Action Comes First

Losing Everything

Nichole Lewis was living in a rented house that came with a horse, and she was picking up its manure, bagging it, and selling it at the top of the driveway for two dollars a bag.

Not long before that, she'd been a global high flyer in property. Then the Global Financial Crisis hit.

One of my most critical crossroads was around 2010, when we lost everything. Everything was gone.

Her husband wanted her to get a job. In his mind, that was the only reliable way to bring money in, and he applied for some on her behalf, though she never took one.

I started picking up horse manure, sticking it in a bag, putting it at the top of the driveway, and selling it for two dollars a bag.

It functioned less like a business plan and more like proof of life: evidence to herself that she could still do something while she worked out what came next. The bags and the twine were free from a neighbour, and so was the horse.

Two dollars a bag was never going to rebuild a portfolio, and that isn't really the point of the story. What it did was interrupt the narrative she'd started telling herself, the one where she'd lost everything and had nothing left to offer. Confidence didn't come back first and grant her permission to try again. Trying again is what brought the confidence back.

Finding The Right People

She didn't rebuild alone, and the way back ran through people as much as willpower. Early on, Nichole worked with a mindset coach who came recommended for exactly this kind of situation, though it didn't help.

I said, these are the things I want to achieve. And she said to me, well, that used to be your life. Now you need to be realistic.

She found a different coach instead, someone who took her stated goals at face value rather than talking her down from them.

He's like, yep, okay, when do you want to do that? Let's make a timeline.

That coach introduced her to a property networking group. She didn't want to go. She felt, in her own words, useless, but she went anyway, told the group what she'd done well, and stayed with it long enough that several of them became close friends and deal partners.

The difference between the two coaches has nothing to do with niceness. The first treated Nichole's ambition as something that belonged to her old life and needed managing down. The second treated it as achievable and asked for a date. Anyone rebuilding after a setback is choosing between those two kinds of support whether they realise it or not.

Turning Fear Into A Process

With the right people in place, the remaining problem was fear, and her way of handling it is more procedural than it sounds.

Fear and risk is simply lack of knowledge. Pull out a piece of paper and do the ETCs. The emotions: what is it that you're really scared of, write down all the worst case scenarios. Then the truth: what's the truth of the situation. And then the choices: what can you actually do.

Written down this way, fear becomes a set of claims to check against the facts rather than a feeling to push through. Most of the claims don't survive the exercise, and the ones that do usually point at a next action considerably smaller than the fear made it look.

She paired that with a change to her own internal language. Whenever the thought "I can't be bothered" showed up, she replaced it with a habit she picked up working in South Africa.

I'll quickly go to the supermarket. I'll quickly do this. I'll quickly do that... it made me so much more productive, and you felt energised at the end of the day because you'd achieved things.

None of this depended on her feeling ready first. It depended on a shovel, an honest read on a coach who wasn't helping, a piece of paper, and one different sentence in her own head. It's the same discipline she now applies to a stalled property deal: keep going until there's an actual outcome, not just a comfortable place to stop.

What This Means For Leaders

For a leader working through their own setback, the ordering is the useful part. Waiting to feel confident before the next difficult call, the next proposal, or the next hard conversation puts the result you want behind a feeling you don't fully control. Nichole's version of the same problem was smaller and more concrete than a mindset shift: pick up the shovel, write down what's actually true, and quickly go and do the next thing.

There's no such thing as failure. You either win or you learn.

Nichole Lewis is the CEO of The Property Lifestyle and international bestselling author of Property Quadrants and No Money Deals. This article draws on her conversation with Chris Turkington on the Fireside Leadership Podcast.

Confidence does not have to come first. Choose one action you have been avoiding and take the next manageable step today.

Then hear Nichole Lewis’s full story and the practical principles she used to rebuild after losing everything.

Watch the full episode on YouTube, listen on Spotify, or explore more Fireside Leadership conversations designed to help you become a better leader tomorrow.